(This caricature of Donald Trump is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)
Congressional Republicans have contorted themselves trying to defend Donald Trump and keep him from being impeached. They have tried myriad different defenses, and all of them have fallen flat. They are now getting desperate.
Trump also seems to be getting desperate, but he has stuck with one way to fight -- a rampant dishonesty. In other words, he has lied about the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment process (and both Democrats and the witnesses called to testify).
This shouldn't surprise us. Trump's answer to any charge or criticism is to lie about it. It's what he's done all his life, and it's what he's done since the day he was sworn into office.
Daniel Dale, at CNN.com, has counted 45 ways that Donald Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and the impeachment process. Here are those 45 ways:
The phone call with Zelensky
1. Trump released an "exact transcript" of his call with Zelensky. (The document says on its first page that it is "not a verbatim transcript.")
2. Trump did not ask Zelensky for anything on the call. (Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden, look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic computer servers, and speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.)
3. Zelensky criticized former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch "out of the blue" on the call. (Trump brought up Yovanovitch first.)
4. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "angry" when she saw the rough transcript of the call, and she said, "This is not what the whistleblower said." (Pelosi has said no such thing in public, and there is no evidence she has said anything like that in private. Her public statement on the call was scathing.)
5. "Everybody" that looked at the text of the call agreed that it was "perfect." (Some of Trump's staunch defenders agreed with this characterization, but clearly not "everybody" did.)
6. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke to Trump about the call and said, "That was the most innocent phone call that I've read." (McConnell said he doesn't recall speaking to Trump about the call. His public statement on the call was far less effusive than Trump's description.)
7. People are not talking about the call anymore. (People continue to talk about the call, a central focus of the impeachment inquiry.)
8. The Washington Post made up fictional sources for its article on how Trump had allegedly tried to get Barr to hold a news conference saying Trump had broken no laws in the call. (There is no evidence that the Post invented sources. Other major news outlets, including CNN, quickly reported the same thing the Post did.)
The whistleblower
9. The whistleblower was "sooo wrong." (The rough transcript and witness testimony have proven the whistleblower to have been highly accurate.)
10. The whistleblower, a second whistleblower and the first whistleblower's source have all "disappeared." (There is no evidence for this. Whistleblowers do not have an obligation to speak publicly after filing their complaints.)
11. The whistleblower had "all second hand" information. (While the whistleblower did get information about the call from other people, the whistleblower also had "direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct," noted Michael Atkinson, the Trump-appointed inspector general for the intelligence community.)
12. The whistleblower "said 'quid pro quo' eight times." (The whistleblower did not even use the words "quid pro quo" in the complaint, much less specify a number of times Trump allegedly said those words. Trump may have been referring to a Wall Street Journal article that had asserted that Trump urged Zelensky "about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani" on a probe that could hurt Biden; the article did not say this claim came from the whistleblower.)
13. The whistleblower "works now for Biden." (There is no evidence for this. The whistleblower's lawyers said their client has never worked for or advised a candidate, campaign or party; the lawyers said the whistleblower has come into contact with presidential candidates for both parties while working as a civil servant in the executive branch.)
14. Someone "changed the long standing whistleblower rules" just before this whistleblower submitted their complaint. (Contrary to a report on a right-wing website, the whistleblower rules were not changed.)
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
15. Schiff committed "a criminal act" by delivering an exaggerated interpretation of Trump's July 25 call at a committee hearing. (The Constitution gives members of Congress immunity for comments they make at committee.)
16. Schiff did have immunity for his comments at the committee, but not when he tweeted a video of those comments. (Experts say members of Congress also have immunity for videos of their comments at committee.)
17. Schiff might have committed "treason." (Treason has a specific constitutional definition that Schiff's actions do not come close to meeting.)
18. Schiff made his comments before Trump released the rough transcript of the call, not expecting Trump to release it. (Schiff spoke the day after Trump released the document.)
19. Schiff "didn't use one word that I said" in his rendition of the call. (Schiff did add words Trump had never said, but he didn't make up the whole thing; some of his remarks hewed closely to what Trump said.)
20. Schiff might have been the whistleblower's source. (This is nonsense. The whistleblower said in the complaint that information about the call came from "multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.")
21. Schiff might have picked the whistleblower. (The whistleblower sought guidance from Schiff's committee before filing their complaint, but Schiff didn't "pick" the whistleblower.)
22. Schiff "will only release doctored transcripts." (Schiff has already released multiple transcripts of testimony from closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings, and there was no sign that any of them had been "doctored." Witnesses and their lawyers were given the opportunity to verify the accuracy of the transcripts prior to release, and Republicans who attended the testimony did not allege that any transcripts had been improperly altered.)
The impeachment process
23. Republicans were not allowed into the closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings. (Republican members of the three committees holding the hearings were allowed into the roomand to ask questions of witnesses. Only Republicans who were not on the committees were barred from the room.)
24. Republicans were not allowed to ask questions in the closed-door hearings. (Republicans were allowed to ask questions. Democrats and Republicans alternated questioning.)
25. Nobody else has ever faced closed-door impeachment hearings. (Both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachment processes involved some closed-door hearings.)
26. Trump's opponents have committed "illegal acts" related to impeachment. (Trump wasn't clear about who he was talking about, but there is no evidence of illegality by either the whistleblower or Democrats.)
27. The people who have testified in the impeachment inquiry have had "no firsthand knowledge." (Various witnesses have had firsthand knowledge of various components of the story.)
28. Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, still says there was "no quid pro quo." (Sondland revised his original testimony to effectively acknowledge his belief that there had been a quid pro quo.)
29. Unlike Democrats, former House Speaker Paul Ryan "would never issue a subpoena." (Numerous Republican subpoenas were issued to the Obama administration during Ryan's tenure as speaker.)
30. "Many" of the people who had testified as of October 21 "were put there during Obama, during Clinton, during the Never Trump or Bush era." (FactCheck.org noted that just two of the nine people who had testified at that point had been appointed under Obama. The other seven were appointed by Trump or his appointees.)
The Bidens
31. Joe Biden, along with his son Hunter Biden, has "ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars." (There is no evidence Joe Biden has profited from his son's business dealings abroad.)
32. A video of Joe Biden speaking in 2018 about his past dealings with Ukraine is evidence of "corruption." (The tape does not show corruption. It shows Biden talking about his effort, in accordance with the policy of the US and its allies, to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor widely considered unwilling to fight corruption.)
33. There is a photo of Joe Biden playing golf with "the company boss" of Burisma, the Ukrainian company for which Hunter Biden sat on the board. (Neither Burisma's owner nor chief executive is in the photo. The person Trump had identified as a "Ukraine gas exec" was Devon Archer, another American board member at Burisma and a longtime business associate of Hunter Biden.)
34. That golf photo contradicts Joe Biden's claim to have "never met the gentleman." (Joe Biden had not claimed to have never met Devon Archer.)
35. Hunter Biden was under investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor who Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire. (There is no public evidence that Hunter Biden was ever himself under investigation. The prosecutor's former deputy has said that the actual investigation, into the owner of Burisma, was dormant at the time of Joe Biden's pressure.)
36. Biden pressured Ukraine to take the prosecutor "off the case." (There is no evidence that Biden ever called on Ukraine to remove the prosecutor from the Burisma case. Rather, Biden, like the US government more broadly, tried to get the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, fired.)
37. Before Joe Biden denied that he had spoken to Hunter Biden about Hunter's overseas business activities, Joe Biden had said he did speak to Hunter about those business activities. (Joe Biden had not said he did speak to Hunter Biden about those business activities. Hunter Biden said they had one brief conversation in which Joe Biden asked him if he knew what he was doing.)
38. Hunter Biden's acts were "illegal." (Hunter Biden has acknowledged using "poor judgment" in accepting the seat on the Burisma board, but there is no evidence of illegality.)
Dealings with Ukraine
39. Trump "didn't delay" the military aid to Ukraine. (His administration did delay the aid.)
40. Democratic senators sent a letter to Ukraine that threatened to deny US aid if the Ukrainians did not comply with their demands. (The letter did not make any threat to Ukraine. The senators expressed concern about a New York Times report that Ukraine had, to avoid Trump's wrath, stopped cooperating with the Mueller investigation and frozen investigations into former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The letter urged Ukraine to reverse course if the report was true.)
41. President Barack Obama sent mere "pillows and sheets" in aid to Ukraine. (Trump was correct that Obama refused to provide lethal military assistance, but Obama sent other military assistance: drones, armored Humvees, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies.)
42. The US is the "only" country providing assistance to Ukraine, and "nobody else is there." (European countries have provided billions in grants and loans to Ukraine since Russia's 2014 invasion.)
43. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is primarily owned by someone from Ukraine. (CrowdStrike is a publicly traded, US-based company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, an American citizen who was born in Russia.)
Polls
44. Impeachment has caused Trump's poll numbers to go "way up" to "higher than they've ever been, ever." (There has been no sign of a significant increase in Trump's poll numbers. His approval rating has fallen slightly since the Ukraine scandal began, according to FiveThirtyEight's poll aggregate.)
45. It was "announced" that a Fox News poll showing majority support for impeaching and removing Trump from office was "incorrect." (Fox News says it stands by the poll.)
